Gaming device manufacturers strive to make wagering gaming devices that provide as much enjoyment, entertainment and excitement as possible for players. Providing interesting and exciting primary or base games and secondary or bonus games in which a player has an opportunity to win potentially large awards or credits is one way to enhance player enjoyment and excitement. Certain known gaming devices use mechanical devices such as reels, wheels or spheres to enhance the attraction of the gaming machines to players and also to enhance the player's game playing experience. These mechanical devices enable a player to see physical movements of components of a game, a portion of a game, or a functional game event or element which increases the player's enjoyment of the game.
Many known slot gaming devices include a plurality of reels and one or more paylines. Such gaming devices typically include a suitable number of reels, such as three to five reels, which each have a suitable number of symbols, such as twenty five symbols per reel. In these gaming devices, the player initiates the spinning of the reels by making one or more wagers on one or more paylines. Such gaming devices may have one, three, five, nine, fifteen, twenty-five or any other suitable number of paylines which extend horizontally, vertically, diagonally or any combination thereof. The player wagers on a player selected number or combination of paylines, such as one, two, three, five, ten or fifteen paylines and the reels are activated to spin.
The reels spin and display a plurality of the symbols, and the gaming device analyzes the displayed symbols to determine if the gaming device has randomly generated a winning symbol or winning symbol combination on or along one or more of the wagered on paylines. Any awards associated with any winning symbols or winning symbol combinations displayed along any wagered on paylines are provided to the player. A paytable determines each award that a player wins for designated winning symbols or designated winning symbol combinations occurring on each activated payline. A line pay award typically is calculated by multiplying the award value for the winning symbol or winning symbol combination by the amount wagered upon the payline upon which the winning symbol combination appears. Such calculated awards are provided to the player.
In conventional slot games, for example, if a player wagers one credit on a first payline and one credit on a second payline, the player has activated two paylines. Making an additional wager activates another payline or increases the wager played on an activated payline. This creates a play of the game having a certain number of activated paylines by a certain number of credits per payline.
Most slot machines are set to pay back on average a certain percentage of the amount of money wagered by players. The average percentage of money wagered that is paid back to the player as an award is sometimes called the average expected payback or average expected payback percentage. The average payback provided by a game is in part determined by the paytable. In a slot game, the paytable determines each award that will be provided for each winning symbol or winning symbol combination appearing on an activated or wagered on payline.
To increase player excitement and enjoyment, it is desirable to provide new games which provide players with new and different game features which vary award returns and risk.